Weather is one of the most significant conditions that affect how people and goods get from one location to another. The ability to easily make travel decisions based on weather conditions is important for saving both time and money. The current methods for making these weather decisions for specific road segments requires the collection of a wide variety of weather sources that can be widely dispersed and which have no specific correlation with a segment of road. In addition, the weather data does not include any value added indexing that helps in the decision making on movement along that road segment. Embodiments of the present invention are designed to provide road segment specific weather indexing and information in a format that is easier to use in third party systems that are making decisions on travel and routing.
Traffic and weather go together. Traffic and weather represent two of the most practical categories of information and news that many individuals use almost every day in planning and living their lives. Thus, it makes sense that traffic and weather information are most often provided together, side by side. For example, drive-time radio will often provide a traffic report, followed immediately by a weather report, or vice versa, to listening commuters several times an hour. Similarly, on-line services will offer or present traffic and weather reports in close proximity, e.g., on a website offered by the same provider. Thus, for example, on a general news or information website one will typically find the links for traffic and weather reports close together, or even right next to each other.
Besides their common importance in people's lives, traffic and weather also go together in another sense. It is well known that weather is an important component in determining traffic flow along roadways. Weather conditions, particularly severe weather conditions, often can affect traffic conditions. Normal traffic conditions and drive times can be affected significantly by severe weather conditions such as heavy rain, snow, ice, and the like.
Thus, weather conditions must be taken into account in order to model accurately traffic conditions. For example, TrafficCast of Madison, Wis., employs forecast weather condition information in combination with historical traffic data to provide an accurate model of traffic conditions that may be used to predict traffic conditions on specific routes at specific points in time in the future. Using historical traffic data for particular travel routes in combination with current or predicted traffic affecting weather conditions and other data an accurate forecast of traffic conditions along a route may be obtained. For example, by analyzing historic traffic conditions, a model of travel times along a section of roadway may be obtained for, for example, particular days, days of the week, seasons of the year, times of day, etc. By analyzing such historic traffic data along with the historic weather data, the effect of various weather conditions on traffic conditions also may be determined and included in the traffic forecast model. Using such a model based on historic traffic and weather information, along with known or predicted future conditions, e.g., predicted weather conditions from a weather forecast model, a forecast of traffic conditions, e.g., travel times, along a roadway may be determined. Such a traffic forecast may be included as part of a traffic report that is provided to users, e.g., via the internet, any portable or otherwise personally addressable communication device, radio or television broadcast, etc.
The weather information employed by the TrafficCast traffic models is provided by MyWeather LLC of Madison, Wis., in a form that is specific to the TrafficCast traffic models. Specifically, for this purpose, a geographic area having various traffic routes of interest to be modeled is divided into a grid. Weather products are generated for each grid area by MyWeather and provided to TrafficCast for use in the TrafficCast traffic forecast models. For example, the weather products for each grid area include weather forecast information generated by MyWeather using a weather forecasting model, such as the ADONIS Microcast weather model, available from Weather Central Inc. of Madison, Wis. The ADONIS Microcast model is a sophisticated computer implemented weather forecasting model that employs information on current weather conditions as initial conditions. Such a weather forecasting model is able to generate detailed predictions of various weather conditions (e.g., temperature, precipitation, wind speed, severe weather conditions, etc.) having a high degree of geographic and temporal resolution and with significant accuracy. Such high resolution forecast weather condition information may then be used to provide forecast weather information for each geographic grid area that is then used by the TrafficCast traffic forecast model to generate accurate traffic forecasts for the various modeled traffic routes that pass through the grid areas.
Thus, although it is known to use weather information in traffic forecast modeling, to date weather information used for such a purpose has been generated and formatted specifically for particular traffic forecast model applications. Weather information has not generally been made available in a form that is useful generically for traffic forecasting or for use in other traffic related products and services, such as navigation, traffic flow and routing. Specifically, the common denominator in traffic flow and routing analysis is the road segment, not a geographic grid area. What is desired, therefore, is a system and method for generating and providing weather information that is specific for specific road segments and which, therefore, will be readily useful for enhanced traffic flow, routing, and navigation generation. Such a system and method preferably provides weather information in the form of one or more numerical or other index values for a plurality of road segments and for a plurality of time periods. Thus, users of such a system or method, or applications using the information provided thereby, can readily determine weather effects at particular road segments at specific points in time for a variety of applications, such as traffic routing.